I’m building this English corner of the blog little by little, and today I want to talk about one of the most popular tropes there is: enemies to lovers, of course.
My favourite book of all time is the absolute epitome of enemies to lovers, and I have been chasing that feeling ever since. I’ll let you read on to find out which one it is.
When someone tells me a book is enemies to lovers, what I’m really hoping for is a slow burn as well. The ones where they’re into each other by page fifty, no thank you. I also count rivals to lovers and dislike to lovers, because the line between the three is thinner than people pretend.
Most of what I love is fantasy, and happily there is a lot of it. Historical is where the trope should thrive and barely exists, which I will never stop complaining about. But I read plenty of contemporary too, usually rivals to lovers, and paranormal. Here are twelve I keep coming back to.
Pick your enemies to lovers MM book by mood
Political fantasy, betrayal, the works
Dark fantasy, and you want it to hurt
Dragons, arranged marriage, endless twists
He came to kill him, six books of court intrigue
Cosy fantasy, funny, nothing hurts
One of them is literally hunting the other
A monster who should have killed him
Paranormal partners who distrust each other
Rivals to lovers, secret, and years of it
Long-running series you can disappear into
Agent and mercenary, opposite goals, no let-up
Dislike to lovers with a lot of history
The books in this selection
- → Captive Prince · C.S. Pacat
- → King of the Dark · Ariana Nash
- → Sorcery and Small Magics · Maiga Doocy
- → Betrothed to the Emperor · Kai Butler
- → Prince and Assassin · Tavia Lark
- → Little Mushroom, Vol. 1 · Yi Shi Si Zhou
- → Soul Eater · Lily Mayne
- → The Wolf at the Door · Charlie Adhara
- → Heated Rivalry · Rachel Reid
- → Cut & Run · Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
- → Where Death Meets the Devil · L.J. Hayward
- → Pretty Pretty Boys · Gregory Ashe
Enemies to lovers MM fantasy, where the trope hits hardest
Fantasy is where enemies to lovers has room to be real. When two people are on opposite sides of a war or a throne, the hostility isn’t a personality clash they can talk their way out of, and the slow burn has somewhere to go. Two of these ruined me, and the third is the gentlest thing on the list.
Captive Prince
Damen should have taken the throne of Akielos. Instead he is betrayed, stripped of his name and handed over as a slave to the prince of the enemy kingdom. Laurent of Vere is cold, manipulative and entirely capable of having him killed, and does not know who he actually is. To survive the court they will both have to work with the person they have the most reason to hate.
The complete trilogy
BOOK 1
Captive Prince
BOOK 2
Prince’s Gambit
BOOK 3
Kings RisingListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
King of the Dark
A prince held prisoner for years by the man who took his kingdom, and the assassin sent into that castle with orders concerning him. What they have between them starts somewhere unexpected, then breaks apart the moment each of them works out what the other has been hiding, and has to be rebuilt from a much worse place than where they started.
The complete trilogy, plus the novella
BOOK 1
King of the Dark
BOOK 2
Reign of Darkness
BOOK 3
Curse of the Dark Prince
BOOK 3.5
The Cottage · novellaSorcery and Small Magics
Leovander Loveage writes frivolous little spells and has never taken anything seriously in his life. Sebastian Grimm has disapproved of him since they were students together, thoroughly and out loud. A miscast curse leaves Grimm compelled to obey any order Leo gives him, which is a disaster for both of them, and the counterspell is somewhere in a forest neither of them should enter.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Sent to kill him: enemies to lovers MM fantasy series
Two long fantasy series built on the same premise: one of them was supposed to murder the other. Neither is a slow burn, they both give in fairly quickly, so what carries them is the “I still don’t trust you” that runs on for books afterwards. If you want a world to disappear into for a month, start here.
Betrothed to the Emperor
Two kingdoms that have spent generations at war agree to a marriage instead. What nobody says out loud is that one half of the couple has been sent to the other’s court with orders to kill him. From there it’s magic, dragons, betrayals from every direction, and a court where nobody’s stated reason for anything is their real one.
The series so far
BOOK 1
Betrothed to the Emperor
BOOK 2
Emperor’s Wrath
BOOK 3
Shadow Throne King
BOOK 4
Dragon Blood Curse
BOOK 5
Crown of Ash · preorderListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Prince and Assassin
A prince of Silaise and the man who came to his court to kill him. Secret identities on both sides, a court where every alliance is a manoeuvre, and two people who work out fairly early that they would rather be doing this than the job they came to do.
The complete series
BOOK 1
Prince and Assassin
BOOK 2
Prince in Disguise
BOOK 3
Prince and Pawn
BOOK 4
Prince and Bodyguard
BOOK 5
Prince and Betrothed
BOOK 6
Prince of AgonyListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Enemies to lovers in sci-fi and paranormal MM romance
Three books where one half of the couple isn’t human, or isn’t supposed to be trusted with the other. The hostility here is structural: it’s someone’s job to hunt the other one down, and no amount of attraction makes that go away quietly.
Little Mushroom, Vol. 1
Humanity is nearly gone and survives inside guarded bases. An Zhe has passed himself off as human to get inside one, and he is a sentient fungal creature. Lu Feng is the officer whose job is to identify and destroy exactly what An Zhe is, and he has started paying attention to him.
Soul Eater
Monsters rule what’s left of America. Wyn the Soul Eater crosses the Wastes every three years to kill, and a military unit is sent to stop him. One soldier survives, and Wyn cannot explain to himself why he let that happen. He takes him along with no plan for what comes after.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
The Wolf at the Door
Agent Cooper Dayton was attacked by a werewolf and has been reassigned to the bureau’s Special Investigations unit, which handles what the rest of the FBI pretends doesn’t exist. His new partner, Oliver Park, works for the werewolf oversight organisation and represents everything Cooper has good reason to be wary of. They are sent to a remote community to investigate a series of deaths.
The complete series, same couple throughout
BOOK 1
The Wolf at the Door
BOOK 2
The Wolf at Bay
BOOK 3
Thrown to the Wolves
BOOK 4
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
BOOK 5
Cry WolfListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Rivals to lovers MM romance in contemporary settings
In contemporary the trope usually softens into rivals to lovers, because nobody is actually at war. What replaces the stakes is what they each stand to lose: a career, a reputation, a partner they have to keep working with tomorrow morning.
Heated Rivalry
Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are the two best hockey players of their generation, on opposing teams, and the press has built a rivalry around them that both of them play up. What happens between them starts at nineteen and continues for years, hidden from everyone, with two careers that would not survive it becoming known.
The Shane and Ilya arc
BOOK 2
Heated Rivalry
BOOK 6
The Long Game
BOOK 7
UnrivaledListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Cut & Run
Ty Grady and Zane Garrett are two FBI agents with nothing in common and no interest in changing that, forced into partnership to catch a serial killer in New York. Ty is reckless and rude, Zane is buttoned-up and hiding a great deal, and their supervisors have essentially set them up to fail.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Enemies to lovers MM books with a case to solve
Two books where the hostility has a history behind it and a job on top of it. Both are as much thriller as romance, and in both the animosity survives well past the point where a lesser book would have dissolved it.
Where Death Meets the Devil
Jack Reardon, an Australian intelligence agent working undercover, ends up tied up in a torture shed in the middle of nowhere, owing his survival to the mercenary who wrecked the operation in the first place. To get out they have to cross hostile desert together, and their objectives have not stopped being incompatible.
The complete series
BOOK 1
Where Death Meets the Devil
BOOK 2
Why the Devil Stalks Death
BOOK 3
When Death Frees the DevilListen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
Pretty Pretty Boys
Emery Hazard comes back to the small Missouri town he grew up in, as a detective now, to work alongside Somers, who was part of the group that made his adolescence unbearable. Somers has spent years becoming someone else. Hazard has not forgotten a single thing, and is not remotely interested in being told it was a long time ago.
Listen to it for free with the Audible trial, if you have not been a member in the past year.
My top 3 enemies to lovers MM books
I’ve read all twelve and I love all twelve, and each one works on me for a different reason. But if I really had to choose, these are the three I keep pushing on people. It was close, and my ranking could move tomorrow. Today, it’s these.
Captive Prince, by C.S. Pacat
My favourite book of all time, and I know that isn’t an original pick. I love that they start as enemies because their nations are enemies, not because of some misunderstanding. I love that the slow burn takes its time, because they have to learn to trust each other first and there’s no shortcut for that. And all the reversals, every single one of them. This is the feeling I’ve been chasing in every book since.
Little Mushroom, by Yi Shi Si Zhou
The purest enemies premise here. One of them hunts and destroys creatures like the other for a living, and it isn’t personal, which somehow makes it worse. Neither can afford to be wrong about the other. It’s the slowest and strangest book on this list, and the rare moments of warmth land ten times harder because of how cold everything around them is.
Cut & Run, by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
This one is more rivals than enemies, and yes, they become f*ck buddies pretty fast. I’m putting it in the top 3 anyway, because I love the series and I’m not going to pretend I don’t. The antagonism keeps flaring back up long after the first time, and Ty and Zane are worth all nine books.
What I want from enemies to lovers is for the hostility to be about something, and for the book to take its time undoing it. All twelve of these do that, in wildly different registers. Captive Prince if you want the one that ruins you, Heated Rivalry if you want contemporary and immediate, Little Mushroom if you want the slowest and strangest.
Know an enemies to lovers MM book I should read? Leave a comment, I genuinely want the recommendations, and I update this list as I go. And if you know of a good historical one, please, I am begging.
Enemies to lovers: frequently asked questions
What is the enemies to lovers trope?
Two characters who begin in genuine opposition and end up together. The opposition can be structural, meaning they’re on opposite sides of a war, a case or a throne, or personal, meaning one has actually harmed the other. What separates it from a simple misunderstanding is that the reason for the hostility is real, and the book has to dismantle it rather than clear it up.
What’s the difference between enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers and dislike to lovers?
Enemies means one of them would genuinely act against the other: Captive Prince, Little Mushroom, Soul Eater, Prince and Assassin. Rivals means they’re competing rather than opposing, usually with careers or pride at stake: Heated Rivalry, Cut & Run, Sorcery and Small Magics. Dislike to lovers is personal antipathy without the stakes, often with history behind it: Pretty Pretty Boys. And Betrothed to the Emperor is really “I don’t trust you” to lovers, which is its own thing. Most books sit somewhere between two of them, and readers use all three labels loosely.
Is enemies to lovers always slow burn?
It should be, and it often isn’t. If two people go from hostility to attraction in fifty pages, the hostility was never doing any work. The slowest here are Pretty Pretty Boys, Captive Prince and Little Mushroom. Cut & Run is the fastest by a long way, and I’ve included it knowing that.
Where should I start if the trope is new to me?
Heated Rivalry is the easiest way in: contemporary, one book, immediately gripping. The Wolf at the Door if you’d rather have paranormal with a mystery attached. Captive Prince is the one I’d push hardest, but go in knowing it’s a trilogy and that book 1 is heavy.
Which of these are standalones?
None of them, strictly. Heated Rivalry and Where Death Meets the Devil come closest, both resolve their central relationship and can be left there. Prince and Assassin also gives its couple a full ending, and the five books after it follow different princes. Captive Prince needs all three books. Little Mushroom, Cut & Run, Pretty Pretty Boys, King of the Dark, Sorcery and Small Magics and Betrothed to the Emperor all continue, and Pretty Pretty Boys in particular does not resolve its romance in book 1.
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